Someone I know casually through my blog said recently, “Your life is so great.” There was something about the tone that implied that 1) having a great life is unseemly and 2) I should shut up already.
I have a wonderful life. I am happy. But that is not to say that I don’t have problems, challenges, sadness, fear, generalized ennui, crankiness, angst, and moments of supreme irritation. I just choose not to blog about those things, usually. I’m not sure why. I guess I exorcise those demons in my fiction, and with my friends-in-real-life. Nobody who really knows me can accuse me of unfailing optimism.
Here are a few of the things I don’t blog about:
--anything that violates the desired privacy of people I love;
--anything I would be embarrassed for my kids to read;
--anything associated with chronic, treatable-but- nonetheless-extremely-unpleasant illness;
--politics (unless I can’t help myself);
--anything that would necessitate a lot of swear words (unless I can’t help myself);
--anything that lays bare the truly ugly, mind-numbingly-hideous-but-with-any-luck-fleeting thoughts I wake up with at 3 am and gnaw on until the sun comes up.
A note on swearing: I love to swear. I believe in swearing. But I write for children, and this blog is linked to my website. So I try to keep a civil tongue.
Which is not to say that I didn’t swear in front of my own children.
When my daughter was three, she stormed in the back door, slammed it, then opened it again and yelled outside to her brother, “I’m never playing with you again, you idiot asshole dick!”
Okay, I couldn’t help myself.
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